Atmospheric turbulence is a phenomenon that is difficult to predict and can significantly effect day-to-day airline operations. Passenger safety and structural fatigue life span of aircraft are most affected by aircraft turbulence encounters. Currently, most encountered turbulence reports depend on a loosely organized subjective reporting system by the flight crews of the aircraft. The magnitude of the turbulence encounter tends to be a non-empirical or subjective assessment by the flight crew. Thus, the same magnitude turbulence may be report as either "severe", "moderate", or "mild", depending on which flight crew experiences the turbulence. Moreover, since local flights, which may be affected by the turbulence, gain no real information, other than turbulence was encountered, they cannot easily determine whether to avoid the turbulence or fly through it.
Thus, there is a need for a system that methodically measures and classifies turbulence in an objective manner. Moreover, there is a further need for a system that reports the systematically measured and classified turbulence to interested parties, such as various ground controls and nearby aircraft.